Film Screening and Discussion—Unsettled: Two Films of Japanese Peru

Japanese American National Museum100 North Central AvenueLos Angeles, California, 90012United States

The Japanese diaspora in Peru has its roots in a vital and restless history that extends back to arrival of the first migrant laborers at Lima’s Callao Seaport. In this program presented in conjunction with Transpacific Borderlands: The Art of Japanese Diaspora in Lima, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and São Paulo, two filmmakers take personal journeys into the Japanese Peruvian experience, uncovering captivating stories of migrants and artists, dissidents and dictators.

Kaori Flores Yonekura’s Nikkei (2011) is an exploration of the filmmaker’s family history in the Americas, while Ann Kaneko’s Against the Grain (2008) documents the work of four artists who defy decades of civil war and tyranny to reimagine Peruvian visual culture. Among those artists is Eduardo Tokeshi, whose work is featured in JANM’s Transpacific Borderlands.

This program is curated and moderated by Renee Tajima-Peña, an Oscar-nominated filmmaker and professor of Asian American Studies at UCLA. Kaneko and Tokeshi will be present for a panel discussion and Q&A led by Tajima-Peña following the screening.